Transversales
2019 · 12m · España
Directed by Afioco Gnecco
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, provocative
This documentary explores how diverse identities intersect in teenagers' lives, weaving together the stigmas, oppressions, and vulnerabilities they already face from an early age.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A doc about intersectionality in teen lives sounds like well-meaning curriculum material, but Gnecco refuses the sermon—the film stays fractured and oblique enough to actually feel like how identity confusion works, not how TED talks explain it.
Formally situated in the essay-documentary lineage, *Transversales* demonstrates considered restraint in its approach to vulnerable subjects, allowing the formal choices around voice, image, and montage to do the argumentative work rather than didacticism.
The decision to let the teenagers' voices overlap and interrupt each other—never cleanly separated into individual narratives—is what makes this work; it's a formal choice that transforms a social-issues doc into something that actually models how these identities collide and tangle in real time.